Malloy visits Norwich, talks guns and taxes with Bulletin brass

Tuesday

Mar 12, 2013 at 12:01 AMMar 12, 2013 at 12:02 PM

Any gun control legislation that arrives before Gov. Dannel P. Malloy must include provisions for a universal background check and an expanded list of crimes that makes people ineligible to own a firearm, he said Monday.

Any gun control legislation that arrives before Gov. Dannel P. Malloy must include provisions for a universal background check and an expanded list of crimes that makes people ineligible to own a firearm, he said Monday.

“I think what we’re trying to do is get a common sense of purpose, taking out of the question the biggest gambles,” Malloy told The Bulletin’s editorial board during an expansive interview that ranged from gun laws to state reimbursement rates for Medicare and Medicaid.

Malloy said the prospect of a national universal background check for gun buyers is good, but he wants Connecticut to be at the forefront of the issue.

“It would be better if we had a national universal background check, which I think we’re going to get to, but that doesn’t mean we have to wait in our own state,” he said.

Malloy’s comments echoed a position paper he released in late February that offered point-by-point proposals aimed at bolstering the state’s gun laws.

He also called out existing gun legislation in Florida and Virginia as laws in “name only,” saying the pipeline of firearms along Interstate 95 into places like Connecticut needs to be plugged.

His comments come in the wake of an advertising blitz by three Connecticut-based gun manufacturers who say the governor’s efforts to outlaw assault weapons in the state could lead to the loss of an industry that employs 741 people and contributes $13.9 million in state taxes.

Over the protests of dozens of municipal leaders from around the state, Malloy stood fast in his support for the removal of a car tax that he says places an undue burden onmiddle and working class families.

Under his plan, any vehicle assessed at $20,000 or less would be exempt from property taxes starting as a local option on July 1, 2014 and becoming mandatory on the same date in 2015.

It’s a revenue stream that brings in an estimated $630 million in combined revenue for the state’s 169 communities. Removing it, opponents say, will force cities and towns to ratchet up mill rates so they can make up the difference.

Malloy rejected that notion, saying the levy represents between 2.2 and 10 percent of most communities’ tax bases and pointing to the fact that Connecticut is the only state which has such a system in place.

The tax works by tying the levy to the mill rate of individual communities, leading to major fluctuations in how much people end up paying, he said.

“There’s nothing cynical about this. Tell me how you can defend taxing a car at one place at 11 mills and in another place at 75 mills. That kind of variance is inherently unfair,” Malloy said. “This is such a bad tax that no other state in the country does it the way we do it.”

Malloy also took time Monday to hit back at the state’s hospitals, which claim that under his budget, they’ll lose more than $500 million in funding over the next two years under a plan to phase out the state’s Medicaid reimbursement rate for care of uninsured patients.

The state’s hospitals pay a combined $350 million tax per year in order to tap into additional Medicaid funding from the federal government. In recent years, the state’s reimbursement to the hospitals has been declining, and Malloy is now proposing to cut that in half in the next fiscal year and entirely in the following fiscal year.

Under the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, more people would have health insurance, and therefore the need for Medicaid reimbursement would be declining during that time.

Malloy said the state’s total outlay to hospitals was $925 million in 2010, compared to $1.47 billion in the most recent fiscal year. That figure will jump to $1.7 billion in each of the next three years, Malloy said.

“It’s a great political ploy they’re doing, but they’re not telling you that we’re sending them more money than that tax generates,” he said.